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Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

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Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#131

Post by DannyB2 »

rincebrain wrote: post #50
JulianMorrison wrote: post #8

Apache should never have accepted this hot potato from Oracle in the first place.

Why do you think so? It's not clear that they could have known this would not be sustainable at the time, and I don't see how the hot potato staying with Oracle would have been a better option.

It was a gift from Oracle, so it should have been immediately obvious that it would turn into a gigantic pooch screw.

It was clear developers were going to flee whether Oracle kept it, or whether Oracle gave it away. It was toxic coming from Oracle, just as if it had been a 'gift' from Microsoft.

(PowerShell on Linux. Need .NET on Linux. Clippy on Linux: it looks like you're trying to get useful work done. Would you like me to help you install Windows 10 on your Linux PC? If you would like Windows 10 installed, then click Yes, or click No, or click Cancel, or click the X in the title bar, or pull the power cord out of the electrical socket to have Windows 10 conveniently installed for you on the next reboot.)

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#132

Post by dorfsmay »

chengiz wrote: post #74
ajdlinux wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in the case of the Windows/OS X environment, where brand awareness of LibreOffice is low, but in the Linux world... my distribution (Debian) doesn't even package OpenOffice, and I don't know any Linux user who uses OOo.

Here's one. Never thought it necessary to change. OO works just fine.

Wasn't OpenOffice own by Sunacle at some point?

I think that's when a lot of users moves to LibreOffice.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#133

Post by okket »

jimjag wrote: post #126
okket wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last remark was too snarky and out of context, I am sorry. You want both projects to merge again with OO being the 'core' and LO the 'user interface'? Sounds intriguing, but are both code bases still compatible enough for that? Would this not be more effort than gain? What is obvious is that the AOO project cannot support, at the present time, being an end-user focused effort. I would suggest we focus on not being…

I didn't say "merge". Being a library or framework which can be consumed, either in whole or in part, by another entity is in no way a "merge".

Why should LO have an interest to switch to an OO core/library? Just to gain the OO name back and be present on the website? Tough deal. Also, I still think the code bases are too different by now [1] and there is little to gain.

Without at at least one 'consumer'/UI (which you do not want or cannot provide) there is little point in developing an OO core/library, or is it? Which leads to my snarky comment about end-users and their role...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12413218

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#134

Post by jkot »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #84
nxzero wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "it is easier to explain to people" Which is why "Office for Free" (OfficeFree, oFree, O4F) would be a better non-Linux name. Average user doesn't care if something is "open" they care if it's free.

I think its a bad idea to even use the word "Office" because it sounds like a lame rip-off you'd download from CNet. In fact, Im suprised MS doesnt have a legal issue with it. Thats always bugged me about a lot of OSS projects and vegan dishes, they pick a name based on their competitor instead of something original that doesn't constantly remind the user they're not quite getting the "real thing".

OpenOffice uses name 'office' for 30 years, 5 longer than MS does.

Wiki:

> OpenOffice.org originated as StarOffice, a proprietary office suite developed by German company StarDivision from 1985 on.

> MS office 1.0 released : November 19, 1990[1] Office 1.0

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#135

Post by david-given »

jnbiche wrote: post #111
david-given wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried him on it a few times (I maintain his machine for him). It's always been too buggy, by which I mean, obvious visible UI bugs immediately after installation. Unity may be horrible, but it has much more robust QA testing. Entertainingly, when I let him play with a bunch of different Linux desktop environments, the one he liked best was actually Haiku, which I threw in as a joke.

> It's always been too buggy, by which I mean, obvious visible UI bugs immediately after installation. Really? I've installed Mate on ~10 computers, and have never run into UI bugs. I run Mate, my two kids run it on their computer, and I'm sometimes on that one helping them with school related stuff. Never run into UI bugs. I don't doubt that there are such bugs, but in my experience they're pretty rare (unless the p…

Not even slightly, sorry. It was a year or so ago.

I'll certainly give Mate another try the next time I upgrade him.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#136

Post by drostie »

lallysingh wrote: post #86
jasonkostempski wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a bad idea to even use the word "Office" because it sounds like a lame rip-off you'd download from CNet. In fact, Im suprised MS doesnt have a legal issue with it. Thats always bugged me about a lot of OSS projects and vegan dishes, they pick a name based on their competitor instead of something original that doesn't constantly remind the user they're not quite getting the "real thing".

I recall that "Office" was ruled too generic a name to really protect some years ago. Because the bundle is just general stuff you'd use in an office. Also, it's a terrible name that doesn't say anything, except that it's sold for use in an office.

Right, the problem is that the generic term for what you're building is an "office suite." It's almost a cliche for these to have had "office" somewhere in the title; I know "WPS Office" is a thing in some places; I remember WordPerfect being bundled with "Borland Office" which I looked up now and apparently it's "WordPerfect Office" these days... and I have a Zoho account and I believe theirs is also called "Zoho Office." I think there was also something called "EasyOffice" once upon a time.

Apple as usual bucks the trend with iWork, and Google with Docs. There's an active KDE project called Calligra, too, and half of the academic world just uses a piecemeal built around LaTeX. Those names are different, but they don't necessarily say anything, either.

Part of the problem is that there's not a nice simple word to say "simple data-set crunching plus pretty authorship tools for both presentations and long-form documents." These are kind of three very different domains which happen to combine together into reporting information. Perhaps a nice open-source project could be named Rapport due to its community vibe and its linguistic tie to "report", but then again, that sounds like an open-source composition/looping software for anyone looking to spin a sick beat.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#137

Post by cesarb »

jimjag wrote: post #119
cs702 wrote: post #115

OpenOffice's website design, marketing efforts, and documentation are less friendly to non-technical people that those of LibreOffice, the most prominent fork of OpenOffice. Subtle "superficial" details matter a lot to non-technical people -- for example, LibreOffice's web page has a "Get Help" link, instead of a "Support" page. In addition, LibreOffice has been the default office suite in key GNU/Linux distributions…

"One possible solution would be for the OpenOffice folks to copy the Linux kernel and become an "upstream project" that others use to create a range of office-suite distributions like LibreOffice." ... which were exactly the thoughts and reasons behind Apache accepting OO in the 1st place. For various reasons this obviously never happened. But it WAS the idea from the start.

Interestingly, that could have happened. Not only did LO make the effort of rebasing all their changes on top of a particular AOO release, they also were set up to incorporate all the new work from AOO into their branch. For instance, they quickly incorporated the sidebar code. Even today, one of the LO developers still goes over each AOO change, merging any worthwhile ones.

What actually happened? For some reason, development on AOO stalled. What little work still happens on it, is almost always replicating work LO already did two, three, sometimes five years ago. See it for yourself at https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=aoo/tru... : pick a commit, and look for the "Notes" field. For instance, picking "Port main/fileaccess to gbuild" I see the note "prefer: 1f9bc2b2aa8168f9c164044058b117d2a17d83ad"; that git hash is for a LO commit from 2011 (https://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?h=aoo/...).

In the meantime, LO did a lot of cleanup work. Finishing the build system move to gbuild, cleaning warnings across all the code base, removing plenty of obsolete or unused code, running several static checkers, and more. As I noted at https://lwn.net/Articles/699108/, the recent AOO CVE was probably found and fixed on LO two years ago, as a result of running a fuzzer together with valgrind. If you wanted to pick an "upstream project" to base an office suite on today, it makes more sense to pick LO instead of AOO.

Re: Contemplating the possible retirement of Apache OpenOffice

#138

Post by ajmurmann »

jkot wrote: post #134
jasonkostempski wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a bad idea to even use the word "Office" because it sounds like a lame rip-off you'd download from CNet. In fact, Im suprised MS doesnt have a legal issue with it. Thats always bugged me about a lot of OSS projects and vegan dishes, they pick a name based on their competitor instead of something original that doesn't constantly remind the user they're not quite getting the "real thing".

OpenOffice uses name 'office' for 30 years, 5 longer than MS does. Wiki: > OpenOffice.org originated as StarOffice, a proprietary office suite developed by German company StarDivision from 1985 on. > MS office 1.0 released : November 19, 1990[1] Office 1.0

That's not the public perception.
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